The Austin Blues Family Tree Project (BFT), a private, nonprofit, documentary collective, is an on-going cultural and oral history project.

We are deeply dedicated to the task of recording the life stories and music of a vanishing community of Texas artists -- African Americans whose musical lineage ties them directly to the culture of a pre-integration black community. Through a variety of media which include oral histories and videotaped performances, the project hopes to document the story of East Austin, formerly a thriving center of African American cultural activity, through its various transitions.

Given the paucity of extant, historical materials which document blues music's local community of origin, the immediate focus of the project has been on older black artists; ultimately our archival work will evolve to cover more of the contemporary local culture. And while the specific focus is on the blues, what we arrive at is a vital cultural history presented through the lives of the musicians.

Giiven this, BFT is a valuable source for blues music history, Austin and East Austin social history, African American cultural history, ethnomusicology, and other scholarly fields. Perhaps most importantly, the project will allow the average citizen to explore permanent cultural time capsules of a vanishing artistic community.

Officially initiated in 1990, BFT has produced seven annual African American History Month Concert Series, more than 150 hours of performance recordings, 25-30 hours of interview footage, approximately 500 pages of interview transcripts, an extensive photographic archive, and a 30-minute video documentary entitled Austin, Texas: East Side Blues. BFT will continue working through the 1990s, culminating at the end of the century. By the beginning of the 21st century, BFT should be the definitive collection of information on Austin's blues music community.

BFT provides an ever expanding body of material for scholarship and production of documentary works on Texas culture, traditional and contemporary blues, African American culture, social and political issues and their intersection with the music community, and related areas. As well, because of the compatibility of the media involved, these materials are readily adaptable to educational radio and television formats.

BFT was conceived and is headed by DiverseArts Production Group's founder and executive director, Harold McMillan, whose production credits include the Austin Jazz Festival (approaching its 11th year) and other regular and semi-regular events. Additional production assistance comes from Austin's wellspring of qualified scholarly, technical and artistic community members. BFT is supported in part by the Texas Commission on the Arts, River City Bluez Productions, and the City of Austin under the auspices of the Arts Commission.